To Ashes

Drip by Drip

Author's Note: Here it is, the long-awaited sequel to From Fire. This book follows directly on from where From Fire ended, so if you haven't read the first book, I would strongly encourage you to do so. More tags will be added as I go. Enjoy!

—

Chapter One

Drip by Drip

—

Eric stared as the drops of water slowly descended down the pillars on his prison. It was a very elegant prison. It was almost as though the fae were unable to build anything that could be considered ugly. Mind, Eric Peterson was less a prisoner left to rot and more a shiny decorative ornament for the new sun fae king to appreciate and mock. It was his powerful and tainted magic that held Eric in his gilded cage.

But, perhaps, all this required a bit of explanation.

Eric didn't live in the normal world. He hadn't for a while. Even now, as he gazed out at the pillars of marble, it seemed surreal to him that there were humans out there just going about their mundane days. People hunting out good places to eat, whining about exams, complaining about their boss or about their kids. People could be shoveling snow or repainting a fence. Boring, wonderfully mundane everyday things.

Eric would give anything to be ordinary and boring. If he had been born a human, then his family would likely still be alive. His childhood friend would still be alive. If he had been a human, he never would have known about the existence of vampires, or chimeras or fae. The truth was there were magical beings everywhere. Their populations were still dwarfed by humans, a painful truth that forced creatures of all kinds to hide their abilities and their abnormalities.

Eric was one of those creatures. Specifically, he was a phoenix. Even by magical creature standards, phoenixes were uncommon. They belonged to the ancient world, one that had not entered the twentieth century in great numbers. Eric had thought he was going to have all the time in the world to learn about his kind and the powers he would inherit. He went to school, loved Mexican food, and played football. What teen wakes in the morning thinking that their entire world would change?

Sadly, his did.

Most kids don't come home to find their house in flames, their family dead and monsters in their driveway. That had been the same night that Eric met Alois, the self-serving and suave vampire master who had taken him from the wreckage of his family home and whisked him away to yet more places unknown.

Life had taken a noticeable turn for the worse after that. In one night, Eric had lost everything. He hadn't even been able to go back to the burnt down remains of his home. The only photos he had of his family were the few he was able to scrape off social media. Strangely enough, Eric's trouble hadn't ended when he was taken in by the vampire Alois. Instead, Alois' coven was attacked, and Eric had met the other man in his life that seemed to cause him endless trouble. Arwen.

Arwen was or rather, had been, the sun fae king. He had 'rescued' Eric from Alois's coven and left the terrified teenage phoenix in an alleyway with five thousand dollars, a new name and a sleeping bag along with the encouraging words of 'try not to die.'

Eric spent years barely scraping by after that. Running in terror from mysterious monsters and never knowing if he was safe. It was strange to know that in a world of vampires, shifters and fae, there was still such a thing as a monster. They were called wraith. These creatures didn't belong in this world. They didn't obey the laws of physics. They turned the space around them into a terrifying silent blackness. The wraith were more like a disease than a thinking, breathing animal. They reproduced by stealing the children of other creatures, corrupting, and rotting them away until they became another soulless wraith. Only as an adult had Eric been able to defend himself by controlling his Phoenix fire.